Saudi Culinary Arts Commission Signs New Partnership to Expand Global Presence

Saudi Culinary Arts Commission Signs New Partnership to Expand Global Presence
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Saudi Culinary Arts Commission Signs New Partnership to Expand Global Presence

Saudi Culinary Arts Commission Signs New Partnership to Expand Global Presence

The Culinary Arts Commission has announced a strategic partnership with the international organization Sirha Food to enhance the presence of Saudi culinary culture at international events and competitions focused on the culinary arts.
Under this partnership, the Kingdom will host regional selection competitions for both the Bocuse d'Or competition and the Pastry World Cup for the Middle East in 2025.

According to SPA, this marks a significant step in the development of the Kingdom’s culinary arts sector, as these prestigious competitions aim to discover the best talents in the region, providing chefs with the opportunity to compete on the global stage and offering Saudi chefs a platform to showcase their skills internationally.
The collaboration between the Culinary Arts Commission and Sirha Food includes participation in the finals of the Pastry World Cup and the Bocuse d'Or World Final, as well as the Sirha exhibition, set to take place in Lyon, France, in January 2025.
The partnership builds on the existing collaboration between the commission and Sirha Food, which previously resulted in the organization of the Sirha Arabia exhibition in Riyadh.
CEO of the Culinary Arts Commission Mayada Badr stated that the collaboration with Sirha Food represents a pivotal step toward advancing the culinary arts in the Kingdom. She noted that hosting the regional edition of the Bocuse d'Or competition and the Pastry World Cup, alongside the commission's participation in Sirha Lyon, reflects its commitment to enhancing the Kingdom's global status in this field.
Badr also pointed out that this partnership aligns with the commission’s ongoing efforts to develop the culinary arts sector through fruitful collaborations that contribute to improving the culinary scene in the Kingdom, fostering growth in the sector, and benefiting Saudi chefs and local talent.



Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
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Thousands Greet the Winter Solstice at the Ancient Stonehenge Monument

A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)
A person holds up a smart phone as they wait for sunrise during the winter Solstice celebrations at Stonehenge, England, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Anthony Upton)

Thousands of tourists, pagans, druids and people simply yearning for the promise of spring marked the dawn of the shortest day of the year at the ancient Stonehenge monument on Saturday.

Revelers cheered and beat drums as the sun rose at 8:09 a.m. (0809 GMT) over the giant standing stones on the winter solstice — the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere. No one could see the sun through the low winter cloud, but that did not deter a flurry of drumming, chanting and singing as dawn broke.

There will be less than eight hours of daylight in England on Saturday — but after that, the days get longer until the summer solstice in June.

The solstices are the only occasions when visitors can go right up to the stones at Stonehenge, and thousands are willing to rise before dawn to soak up the atmosphere.

The stone circle, whose giant pillars each took 1,000 people to move, was erected starting about 5,000 years ago by a sun-worshiping Neolithic culture, according to The AP. Its full purpose is still debated: Was it a temple, a solar calculator, a cemetery, or some combination of all three?

In a paper published in the journal Archaeology International, researchers from University College London and Aberystwyth University said the site on Salisbury Plain, about 128 kilometers (80 miles) southwest of London, may have had political as well as spiritual significance.

That follows from the recent discovery that one of Stonehenge’s stones — the unique stone lying flat at the center of the monument, dubbed the “altar stone” — originated in Scotland, hundreds of miles north of the site. Some of the other stones were brought from the Preseli Hills in southwest Wales, nearly 240 kilometers (150 miles) to the west,

Lead author Mike Parker Pearson from UCL’s Institute of Archaeology said the geographical diversity suggests Stonehenge may have served as a “monument of unification for the peoples of Britain, celebrating their eternal links with their ancestors and the cosmos.”